War brings easy profits for some, hardship for others

While experts are heartened by just how well the economy of the world’s top cocoa producer Cote d’Ivoire has coped with three years of civil war, the man in the street maintains things have never been tougher. The driving force behind the Ivorian economy is cocoa, and while production has slipped, instability ironically has kept revenues stable. Cote d’Ivoire produces 40 percent of the global annual cocoa crop, providing 2003 export value to the Ivorian government of US $2.3 billion, according to government and International Monetary Fund figures. “The economy manages to survive quite well,” a World Bank official said on condition of anonymity. “The south of Cote d’Ivoire especially remains very dynamic and competitive,” the economist told IRIN. “As soon as the crisis is over, the economy should be able to rapidly get back on its feet.” Until the country’s first ever coup in 1999, Cote d’Ivoire was a rare example of political stability in a region synonymous with conflict. And the high-rise buildings and sweeping highways criss-crossing the lagoons of the economic capital Abidjan are testament to an unmatched record of economic development in West Africa. But most foreign investors have shied away from Cote d’Ivoire since a failed September 2002 coup split the country in two with rebels taking the north of the country and the government retaining the south. The presence of 10,000 UN and French peacekeepers offers some security guarantees however, and last month President Laurent Gbagbo’s government renewed a 15-year contract worth US $1.83 billion with French group Bouygues to produce and supply electricity. High international oil prices have more than doubled government earnings from its still tiny oil exports sector since 2003, according to government data. And more money is due to pour into state coffers with the newly discovered offshore Baobab oil field producing nearly 48,000 barrels per day since production started in early September. Abidjan’s port, the traditional nerve centre of the country, continues to be one of the busiest in the region, with ships loaded with Ivorian pineapples, bananas and mangoes sailing off on a daily basis with the cargo destined for European supermarkets. Yet the economy of Cote d’Ivoire is these days a war economy, with revenues from transport taxes and cotton and cocoa channelled primarily towards the government and the rebels, while funds and reinvestment in services and infrastructure dry up. Just as potholes mushroom along Cote d’Ivoire’s once well-manicured roads, cracks are appearing in the Ivorian economy. On the highway connecting the fertile south with the arid north, convoys of up to fifty foreign trucks can be seen at once carrying illegally imported consumer goods from northern neighbouring countries to the southern port city of Abidjan. Ventilators, DVD-players, CDs, mopeds, television sets - thousands of luxury items are daily hauled untaxed from countries like Mali and Guinea and sold for next to nothing in the south, often with the complicity of rebels and police, analysts say. It is cheaper for the goods to be shipped in convoys, with each truck paying a set rate, than to travel alone and face greater risk. Haulage through north or south can cost US $200 a truck plus extra payments at roadblocks, according to UN figures. But ironically, Cote d’Ivoire’s own instability has afforded it some protection. So important to the global cocoa market is Cote d’Ivoire that news of the 2002 rebellion pushed cocoa prices to 16-year highs. According to a recent UN report submitted to the Security Council, with the government of Laurent Gbagbo cut off from donor funding, it has become dependent on cocoa revenue to maintain the day to day functions of the state, including paying civil servant wages as well as the armed forces. And in the north, occupying rebel forces are also using cocoa to fund military activities as well as personal profit. But while cocoa earnings remain strong, high market prices are masking a decline in output. Smuggling is rife, with tonnes of Ivorian cocoa winding its way to neighbouring Ghana or even Togo, where farmers receive a better price for the beans. Also, cocoa plantations have lost large numbers of the migrant workers who have fled the country for fear of persecution. In the cocoa-producing west some plantations have already returned to forest, say villagers. According to the International Cocoa Organisation (ICCO), production is down by 10 percent from 1.4 million tons from the 2003/4 harvest, to just over 1.2 million tons for 2004/5. An estimated seven million people from a total population of 17 million depend directly or indirectly on cocoa, either as farmers, farm hands, jute bag makers or truck drivers. In the town of Guiglo, in government controlled western Cote d’Ivoire and in the heart of the cocoa producing region, nearly every family has been made poorer save for a few who have profited from the war. “Parents have less money than before, they can’t find the cash to send their kids to school,” said Jacques Ki, headmaster of the local Catholic School. Nothing works like before the war - food, commerce, money - it’s all tied up in the hands of a few.” Roadblocks have become a lucrative means of generating income for armed forces on both the government and rebel side of the divide. Trucks are a favourite for “taxes” and “tolls” and haulage companies are seeing their profits slashed. Truck drivers complain too that the job is getting more dangerous. “The majority of lorries head north from here to Burkina Faso or to Mali,” said a driver based in the rebel-held western city of Man, who would only give his name as Tourama. “It’s death going south, lots of trucks have been hijacked… four times I’ve been hijacked by masked men. I’m too scared to go south now,” Tourama said. And the war is encouraging potentially fatal shortcuts, the drivers at Man lorry park explain. Road accidents are more and more frequent because truck-owners and middlemen are not maintaining their lorries to cut costs and trucks are being over loaded with more goods than ever before. And more and more potholes are sprouting along roads that have not been properly maintained since before the war, they say. In Man, drivers go back to their discussion in the shade of a parked lorry, one of dozens not in use despite the fact that it’s harvest time, usually a busy time for the trucks. At the marketplace, unemployed young men seek shade from the hot sun to while away the day with friends. “Tourists used to come from Europe to visit Man, to see the waterfall here, but not any more,” said 24-year-old Octave Coulibaly. “The roads are in bad shape, the houses are all bust and even the schools got smashed up in the fighting.” The young men feel trapped in Man; there are no jobs and there is no way out. “Before it used to take five hours to get to Abidjan, now you’re two days on the road and you pay a fortune [in bribes] to get there,” said Coulibaly, who would love to go to Abidjan in search of work but can’t raise enough cash for the journey. He’s also put off by the rebel and government military road blocks: “They don’t understand human rights and they are there, in the road, with a gun!”